The reluctant cannibal

by Flanders & Swann, circa 1956

Seated one day at the tom-tom, I heard a welcome shout from the kitchens: “Come and get it!”

Roast leg of insurance salesman.

A chorus of yums ran round the table. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.... Except for Junior, who pushed away his shell, got up from his log, and said, “I don't want any part of it.”

What? Why not?

I don't eat people

Eh?

I won't eat people

Huh?

I don't eat people

I must be going deaf

Eating people is wrong

It's wrong?

Don't eat people

Have you gone clean out of your mind?

I won't eat people

What's the matter with the lad?

Don't eat people

He keeps on repeating

Eating people is bad

But people have always eaten people, what else is there to eat? If the juju had meant us not to eat people, he wouldn't have made us of meat.

Don't eat people

Oh no, not again

I won't eat people

All the day long

Don't eat people

He keeps on repeating

Eating people is wrong

Well, I've never heard of a more ridiculous idea in all my born days. To think that a son of mine should grow up to be a sissy... Me, chief assistant to the assistant chief. I suppose you realise, son, if this was to get around we might never get self-government.

I won't eat people!

Have you been talking to one of your mothers again? You're not getting to be one of these cranks that thinks that eating people is cruel, are you, you see a man sitting in a pot and think he's suffering? Oh, it's not like that at all. Why, he's just had an invigorating chase through the forest. He's sitting there in the nice warm water, with all the carrots and dumplings and things, he's thinking “Oh, the pleasure and happiness I'm going to give to a whole heap of people”, that man in the pot there, he enjoys it.

Eating people is wrong!

Look, son, son, I admire your sincerity, always be sincere, whether you mean it or not. You're young, when you're young, you think you can change the whole world overnight, even eating people, I know, I've been young myself. Take it from your old dad, you've just got to learn to take the world as it is.

I won't let another man pass my lips!

I know why you say “Don't eat people”, because you are a coward, Francis, that's your trouble, yes, a yellow-livered coward. You wouldn't mind eating people if you weren't afraid of ending up in the pot yourself. How despicable. Go on like this and you're liable to get me into hot water.

I won't eat people!

That's enough!

I don't eat people!

I don't want to...

Eating people is wrong!

Communist!

Going around saying “don't eat people”, that's the way to make people hate you! We always have eaten people, always will eat people — You Can't Change Human Nature.

I won't eat people!
I don't eat people!
I won't eat people!
I don't eat people!
I won't eat people!

It must be someone he ate

Eating people is out!

I give up. I give up. You used to be a regular anthropophagi. If this crazy idealistic idea of yours was to catch on, I just don't know where we would all be. It would just about ruin our entire internal economy. Fortunately, I suppose its catching on isn't very likely. Why, you might just as well go around saying “don't fight people”, for example...

Don't fight people? Ha ha! (Both convulsed with laughter)

Oh, that's my boy.

(In chorus:) Ridiculous!